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Plutonium powered robot car! With a laser gun! That's (kind of) what's hurtling through space right now as part of NASA Mars Science Laboratory heads for the Red Planet. Hank walks you through this historic mission, with the help of some kick ass animations (thanks NASA!).

NASA's Curiosity Rover is currently roaming Mars' surface and climbing mountains in search of organic material and evidence of ancient life. The path is difficult to navigate and full of sand traps that could put the rover out of commission.

NASA has been working with Microsoft's HoloLens technology to allow its Mars Curiosity rover engineers to visualize Mars and plan missions for the robot. We try a version of this OnSight application and chat with NASA's Dave Lavery about the potential of this kind of mobile virtual reality.

Five years of images from the front left hazard avoidance camera (Hazcam) on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover were used to create this time-lapse movie. The inset map shows the rover's location in Mars' Gale Crater. Each image is labeled with the date it was taken, and its corresponding sol (Martian day), along with information about the rover's location at the time.